A Dangerous Mourning

New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1991. First Edition First Printing Stated . Hard Back. Near Fine/As New. 6 1/2" X 9 1/2. 330 Pages. September 1991 First Edition with full number line. No defects noted to this As New book with flawless interior text pages. This story is about the gaslit world of Victorian London, where Inspector William Monk plies his dangerous trade. No breath of scandal has ever touched the aristocratic Moidore family. Almost every day London's wealthiest and most powerful can be found taking tea or dining in the opulent family mansion of Sir Basil Moidore in Queen Anne Street. Now Sir Basil's beautiful widowed daughter has been stabbed to death in her own bed, a shocking, incomprehensible tragedy. Inspector William Monk is ordered to find her killer without delay -- and in a manner that will give the least possible pain to the influential family. But Monk, brilliant and ambitious, is handicapped, both by lingering traces of amnesia caused by an accident and by the craven ineptitude of his supervisor, who would like nothing better than to see Monk fail. With the intelligent help of Hester Latterly, an independent young woman who has served with Florence Nightingale in the Crimean War, Monk gropes warily through the silence and shadows that obscure the case. Step by dangerous step, he approaches the astonishing, appalling solution. In her elegantly suspenseful unfolding of the terrible truth, Anne Perry demonstrates her complete mastery of the storyteller's art, and her keen understanding of Victorian England's manners and mores.